On The Menu: A Rainbow in North Carolina

by Carole Ball

Restaurant Reviews

Summer Volume: 1999 Issue: 6(2) page(s): 27

CHINA RAINBOW, 1510 Stokes Ferry Road, Salisbury, NC 28144; phone: 704 639 0088. serves delicious food, mostly Cantonese or from the Sichuan province. It can be your pot of culinary gold should you go to locate this China Rainbow. It is conveniently located just off exit 76A on Interstate 85, and within an hour's drive from Charlotte, Greensboro, and Winston Salem, North Carolina. It caters to many sophisticated students and faculty who wend their way there to enjoy it.

China Rainbow offers full lunch and dinner menus and at dinner, it features traditional favorites like General Tso's Chicken, Beef with Fresh Broccoli, Twice Cooked Pork, and Lobster Cantonese. Each dish is carefully prepared with the finest ingredients. They also offer various Chow and Lo Meins, Mai Funs, and Egg Foo Young dishes along with a good selection of regular appetizers, soups, and main course dishes.

At lunch, there are thirty two suggestions; but they are only served from 11:30 am to 3:30 pm. Most are a little less than four dollars, half dozen just over that amount. Sixteen are chicken dishes, six are beef or pork items, seven are made with shrimp, and three are primarily, if not totally, vegetarian.

The 'Chef's Specialties' box on the menu features many items including one called Four Season. You get five flavors because it is loaded with shredded crabmeat, chicken, roast pork, beef, and shredded vegetables. Others include Orange Flavored Chicken and Orange Flavored Beef, they have chunks of meat fried crispy in this chef's special hot sauce. Dragon & Phoenix comes with jumbo shrimp, chicken, and Chinese vegetables in a lovely light white sauce. There are seventeen others recommended from Double Happiness to Triple Flavor to the above mentioned Four Season. The first mixes chicken, shrimp and soft noodles, the second beef, chicken, and shrimp and a mélange of water chestnuts, baby corn, mushrooms, and snow peas, and the third is a mixture of crabmeat, chicken, roast pork, and beef mixed with shredded mushrooms. Clearly these provide palates a rainbow of flavors.

For a special treat, try China Rainbow's Special Dinner Buffet. It features succulent Alaskan Crab legs and tasty fresh shrimp and seventy other items, many considered special anywhere. If you want a sentimental meal, order a Pu Pu Platter for two, Moo Goo Gai Pan, Shrimp with Lobster Sauce, or Pork Fried Rice. At dinner try them, or wax even more nostalgic with Chicken or Shrimp Chow Mein. These last golden oldies are served alone or as a dinner combination platter with Pork Fried Rice and an Egg Roll. Nostalgia reigns on the bill, too, as these dishes cost less than six dollars.

Everything sampled was delicious! The sauces were masterfully prepared. Each dish offered the subtle flavorings expected. And in keeping with earlier pricing, we found more than fifty dinner menu items costing less than nine dollars, most under seven bucks. Lobster Cantonese, Hot Spiced Lobster, Szechuan Crispy Scallops, Shrimp de Coin Scallop, Fruit of the Sea, and the Phoenix Delight ranged from eleven to thirteen dollars each. Most other dinner menu items cost less than nine dollars, and like their decor they are attractive and contemporary. Here the staff is friendly and courteous, they try hard to assure that your meal will be a memorable one. Truly a pot of gold worth seeking at this rainbow.
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Carole Ball, currently pursuing a Master's in Library Science at UNC Greensboro, has lived in New York and frequented Chinese restaurants there and elsewhere. Furthermore, she comes from a family that loves food, so she knows where of she speaks.

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